To wind large multi-diameter cables onto a drum with contiguous turns require the cable to be positioned in line with the turn to be wound. In other words, the operation requires that the position of the cable is at all time aligned with the axial winding position on the cable drum.
Such cable positioning during winding is known in the art and is generally performed using a spooling gear device provided with a guide nut which makes it possible for the section of the cable present at the cable drum to be oriented perpendicular to the axis of the cable drum, hence ensuring an appropriate wound up of the cable.
The spooling gear system is normally a system that can move translationally along an axis parallel to the rotational axis of the cable drum. The lateral movement follows the winding turn and the guide nut prevents the cable from moving laterally and vertically. Consequently, the winding of the cable onto the cable drum is accompanied by a rotational movement of the cable drum and by a lateral reciprocating movement of the spooling gear along the axis parallel to the axis of the cable drum. Matching the dimensions of the guide nut to the diameter of the cable to be wound makes it possible to precisely position the latter, hence ensuring uniform winding.
While the techniques of winding a cable or similar object onto a cable drum are generally controlled, these traditional winding techniques suffer an important disadvantage. The technique does not perform a satisfactory winding of cables in which the cable diameters change significantly due to for example attached shackles, connection pieces and/or end terminations. The guide nut simply cannot be produced without jeopardizing the guiding of the cable properly during the spooling. For example, if the nut is produced with an internal diameter large enough to accept the predicted variation in the cable diameter, the risk of non-uniform winding onto the drum is high, in particular around the mid axial length of the drum in which an undesired loss of cable contact from one side of the guide nut is expected.
Guiding devices for winding multi-diameter cables in a uniform manner onto a drum are available. One recent example is the publication WO 2009/138354 A1 wherein a cable guiding device is disclosed having a cable-guiding channel with curved and mutually offset side walls. By ensuring non-interrupted cable contact, this particular configuration does accept larger variations of the cable without manual intervention and without jeopardizing the uniform winding.
Firstly, it requires a certain bending of the cable set by on the curvature of the sidewalls, thus requiring an upper limit of its flexural rigidity. Secondly, to assure throughput of large-diameter cables it is necessary to make the spatial offset between the two curvature centers large. The result may be a device that is inconveniently long compared to the length of the cable.
There is a need, therefore, for a cable guide device that overcomes all of the disadvantages mentioned above, that is                to assure uniform winding onto a drum, also of cables exhibiting large variations in cable diameter, for example due to alien elements such as shackles, connection pieces and/or end terminations        to ensure satisfactory operation also for cables with high flexural rigidity, and        to keep the length of the cable guide device low even for large cross-sectional cables.        
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a cable guide device that fulfills all of these needs.